


Where the Fallout Lies

by Thuri



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, no tags challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-11
Updated: 2011-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 04:59:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuri/pseuds/Thuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when the lines between reality and fantasy blur?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Fallout Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: MCR gen, on the set of the Killjoys videos
> 
> So I apparently have to AU everything in my life. And the plot bunny that took hold of me could have been an epic that would’ve lasted for thousands and thousands of words--not having enough time for that, I hope I still managed to do it justice.

Somewhere between the dog food, the ray guns, and the firelight, it finally hits him. This is for fucking real. They’re actually doing it, actually making this world of prismatic pain a reality. Actually wearing the goddamn clothes, playing heroes in the desert. Putting the images from his head right up there on the screen, creating the characters they’ll play until the end of the tour.

It’s not the first concept album, and he thinks they all know now it won’t be the last. But this one...it’s different, it’s bigger, louder, and at the same time more intimate. It’s an explosion of who they are, an affirmation, a...

Shit. He was getting too fucking philosophical over a damn music video. It was fun, it was entertainment. Art might be his weapon, but he had other things to think about right now than how they got here.

Things like exactly how much sand had worked its way into his underwear. Fucking desert.

* * *

Gerard blinked. And blinked. And blinked again, pain crackling through his body. What the fuck?

Behind him, Frank groaned, a whining, breathy sound. "Ow," he said, clearly and indignantly.

"You said it," Ray grunted, from somewhere closer.

Mikey only made a noise in his throat, but it was enough to relax Gerard. That was everyone...but what the hell was going on?

He blinked again, desert scrub gradually resolving itself before his eyes, sand and dust and Joshua trees spreading out in the dim light.

They'd been filming. That was it. Filming the Na Na Na video, gotten to the showdown scene, Grant holding Grace as she struggled, while he watched from the ground. Take after take after take to get it right, get the mood he wanted, get the scene perfect.

And then set up for the fallen Killjoys, all of them lying down, playing dead. He'd called action, and then...

And then what? He groaned, pushing himself up, looking around for the crew, the trailer, the reassuring paraphernalia of filming.

Barren landscape and sand blowing in a chilling breeze were all that met his eyes. "Shit..."

"Where'd everybody go?" Frank asked, still sounding way too calm for Gerard's piece of mind.

Gerard shook his head, turning in a slow circle. No evidence of the activity of filming. No trailers, no cameras, no craft services, nothing. Just a set of tracks leading up to where his band members lay, and another across from them, leading off into the desert.

He shifted again, hand going to the ache in his stomach. He pulled away his scorched costume jacket, exposing a burn against the white skin of his belly.

The others proved no better off--and Ray was worse, one eye swollen shut and darkly bruised, blood crusted under the lid. Evaluating their situation brought little comfort. To all appearances, they'd somehow been through the showdown so recently filmed, their bodies bearing evidence of the Draculoids laser blasts.

Blasts from guns suddenly, horribly operational. And when Gerard aimed his own into the sand, squeezing a before purely decorative trigger, he'd turned a silver dollar sized patch of sand to slag.

Impossible as it seemed, the world they'd created in their video had become their reality.

"What if it's not just us?" Frank asked, expressing aloud the thought that beat worried wings against the inside of Gerard's skull, the thought he'd been trying to cage and ignore. "What if they actually have Grace?"

Imagining the world he’d created made real, imagining the talented, irrepressible Grace at the mercy of the draculoids, the scarecrows, imagining how he’d feel if it were his own daughter lost in this world, Gerard wasn’t really surprised to hear his own voice rising over the desert wind. “We go after her, and make sure.”

Despite a few grumbles from the others, they couldn’t seem to bring themselves to disagree with him. They merely pulled themselves to their feet and got moving. Bandannas were soaked in water from canteens, blood and worse cleaned away from their skins. Mikey helped Ray improvise a bandage for his eye, Gerard convinced Frank to let him take a look at his twisted leg, and they limped their way off through the Joshua trees.

They reached the sun-bleached road faster than Gerard had feared. And there was the car, painted just as it should have been, hidden behind a screen of brush. Gerard patted his jeans’ pocket, finding the keys inside.

“Diner first?” he asked, getting a wave of exhausted assent. Frank and Ray climbed into the car as Mikey helped him pull free the uprooted scrub brushes and tumbleweeds, tossing them aside. He glanced at the others, as he climbed into the driver’s seat, noticing they’d both all but passed out again. “How’re they holding up?” he asked Mikey in an undertone.

Mikey shrugged eloquently and Gerard nodded. He’d gotten the guys to follow him along on a lot of shit, but this had to be the strangest thing yet.

Wasn’t going to stop him. If they really were somehow stuck in a world of his creating...then they had to get Grace the fuck out of it.

* * *

Everything had gone too well. He should have known, when they got past the first roadblock so easily. When they took out the draculoids at the front door.

And especially when they got inside and found Grace, pulled her free from the room so easily. He should have known it was all going to go to hell. He should have known.

She’d run to him, throwing her arms around him so tightly, asked to go home. He’d promised her it would all be okay. He’d promised...

Gerard stared into cold, merciless eyes, inhuman windows into a face at once Grant’s and not. Korse, brought to life, the smooth muzzle of his gun pressed tightly against Gerard’s chin, his hand pressing Gerard’s shoulder back into the wall. His own invention, all too real.

From far away, he could hear Mikey’s shouts, Grace screaming. He wanted to tell them to go, tell them to leave him, get to the car, get her out of here. But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t twist away, caught by that stare.

They’d almost made it, even so. Almost gotten away, running toward the front door, he and Mikey fighting back to back, the others in sight of the car. But then too many had come, overwhelmed them. He’d shot more and more, but they was always another. And these ones knew how to fight, how to handle themselves. Gerard was painfully, desperately aware that he was a musician, not a fighter, that the others were the same. They were out of their league. Outside their experience. Only in his imagination had he stood a chance against these kinds of foes.

He’d created this monster, this world, and now it was going to end him. End them all.

Korse smiled, a horrible, twisted parody of joy, and light exploded before Gerard’s eyes, his body collapsing all at once, legs refusing to obey his commands to hold him up. Distantly, he heard Mikey scream, a gut wrenching cry of loss. Distantly, he saw Frank and Ray grab Grace, pulling her toward the open door and freedom. Distantly, very distantly, he saw his brother fall.

As darkness closed over him, as Frank hit the ground, he could only hope they’d somehow forgive him, for getting them caught up in this.

Could only hope that somehow, someway Grace would escape, would survive.

* * *

“Cut! That was great, man, I think we really got it that time! Anyone tell you you’re a natural at death scenes, Gerard?”


End file.
